alternative therapies and new age

7/23/2019 Alternative therapies and new age

1/5

Alternative Therapies

Rodrigo Toniol*

Anthropology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

Keywords

Health; Holism; Energy; Harmonization

Definition

The termAlternative Therapiesrefers to knowledge, practices, and techniques for intervening in health

and sickness processes that diverge from the principles of modern Western medicine. This broad

denition becomes more precise when we recognize their historical connection to the counterculturemovements of the 1960s and 1970s. As one of the expressions of these movements, alternative

therapies despite their diversity share the following characteristics: (a) recognition of the principle

of a vital connection between the body, the world, and the universe; (b) a holistic approach to the body;

(c) rejection of the use of highly complex technologies in treatments.

Introduction

The termAlternative Therapiesdesignates not a closed set of therapeutic procedures but rather a wide and

dynamic domain. In its most fundamental sense referring to knowledge, practices, and techniques for

intervening in health and sickness processes that diverge from the principles of modern Westernmedicine the category has exceeded the bounds of the New Age movement and been adopted by

agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) to refer to a broad set of health care practices that

are not part of that country's own tradition and are not integrated into the dominant health care system

(Zhang2000, p. 1). Despite these different uses, though, here I shall describe alternative therapies as the

materialization of ideas relating to health formulated in a New Age context, the most common examples

of which in Latin American countries are Reiki, crystal healing, reexology, acupuncture, kinesiology,

craniosacral therapy, massage, visualization, meditation, yoga, homeopathy, nutritional and dietary

therapies, iridology, color therapy, dance and music therapy, hydrotherapy, osteopathy, chiropractic,

biodanza, polarity therapy, shiatsu, past-life regression or reincarnation therapy, healing by touch or

laying on of hands, aromatherapy, the Alexander technique, ayurveda, and herbal medicine.Some of these therapies have historical roots in millennial practices. However, their popularization in

the West has been shaped by the New Age phenomenon. Authors like Wouter Hanegraaff (1998), Maria

Tighe, and Jenny Butler (2007) suggest that to understand the impact of specic therapeutic practices

during this period, we need to recognize the importance of the different emphases on curing processes

which the Holistic Health and Human Potential movements lent to New Age ideas of health. These

distinctions are, they argue, founded primarily on the type of therapeutic procedure favored by each, since

both movements share an approach to curing in which body, mind, and spirit form an indivisible whole.

*Email: [email protected]

Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_3-1# Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015

Page 1 of 5


2/5

There is no space here to explore the characteristics of these movements in any detail, but it is worth

stressing how their different emphases promoted certain types of therapies.

The Human Potential movement centers on the idea that, especially in the second half of the twentieth

century, Western modernity imposed a kind of lifestyle that suppressed the natural human potential,

distancing people from their

true selves.

Recuperating this potential and the subjects connection to himor herself is the movements main objective. To this end it has invested in the development of therapeutic

technologies inspired by the approaches of researchers and therapists like Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow,

and Wilhelm Reich. The set of therapies derived from this movement is wide ranging, especially if we set

it alongside others that also inuenced conceptions of health and curing in the New Age context, such as

transpersonal psychology and shamanic consciousness. All of these recognize self-improvement as a

condition for balancing the body, mind, and spirit.

In Wouter Hanegraaffs words, A central characteristic of Holistic health is the important role that the

mind plays in physical healing. The immunity system or, alternatively, the Indian chakra system, is seen as

the connection between the spiritual, mental and emotional faculties, on the one hand, and the physical

body, on the other (Hanegraaff 1997, p. 54). As well as emphasizing the impact that psychological

disorders have on physical health, the therapies that emerged from this perspective also shared the premisethat subjects are responsible for their own health and sickness processes. Feelings like anger and

bitterness, for example, are taken as potential causes of diseases like diabetes. To some extent, the person

is made an accomplicein their own illness, while also implying that he or she plays an active role in

staying healthy.

These observations on the emergence of alternative therapies from the movements that historically

forged the relationship between health and New Age philosophies indicate just some of the possible ways

of classifying them. Other heuristic and classicatory approaches have been systematically developed by

researchers studying the topic.

Leila Amaral (2000), for example, suggests the existence of two kinds of cure typical of New Age

therapies. Therst is harmonic curing, the goal of which is to harmonize the energies of bodies so that they

resonate with the other forces and laws of nature. In this kind of cure, bodies must vibrate in order to renew

their essential forces in synergy with cosmic laws. A recognizable afnity exists between this type of cure

and the esoteric and spiritualist ideas of the nineteenth century, which postulated the existence of relations

between the world and the heavens. Among the therapies most widely used in this group are reiki,ower

remedies, and even homeopathy. The reikian procedure of laying on of hands, for instance, is emblematic

of how connections between bodies are produced, its aim being to capture universal energy and, through

the therapists intervention, direct it to the patients more stagnant energy channels. The ow of energy

establishes a path of communicability that extends from the universe to the hands, from the hands to the

chakras, and from the chakras back to the universe. Floral therapy, in turn, involves the connection

between matter and energy with the aim of transforming a disharmonious energetic vibration into

something that enables the subject to connect with the whole.Another kind of cure highlighted by Amaral is shamanic curing. This type of cure involves journeying

to the realm of the immaterial (the non-thing) were subtle forces transmute into material substance: in

other words, matter dissolves into energy and is recongured as matter (Amaral 2000, p. 65). This kindof

therapy may be guided by a facilitator, but it invariably depends on a set of resources and dispositions

possessed by the subject being treated. In this modality, there are constant references to the principles of

quantum physics, especially the idea that the cluster of particles forming matter is always provisional,

meaning that the world is in a constant state of becoming.

In developing her classicatory model, Ftima Tavares (2012) sets out from a description of the

unnished state of the New Age universe and the intense dynamic involved in the emergence of new

therapies and, consequently, of new therapists and user proles. Consequently, she opts to delineate the



Page 2 of 5


3/5

eld of alternative therapies through a double negation. First, Tavares writes, these therapies involve a set

of practices dissimilar to what we would recognize as the religious administration of the cure that is,

kinds of rituals and procedures designed to cure health problems performed in the context of religious

institutions. Second, another negation denitive of the practices understood as alternative therapies are

their differences to the biomedical paradigm dominant in Western societies. For Tavares, the network ofalternative therapies is situated in a mystical-esoteric nebula whose practices, although not necessarily

limited to New Age reference points, interconnect and coalesce with them.

Another potential classicatory model for alternative therapies is one that differentiates between

diagnostic practices and therapeutic treatments. The rst group includes practices such as the use of

pendulum radiesthesia, for example. The second group includes practices such as acupuncture and

phytotherapy. A third set can also be identied that includes techniques located between diagnosis and

therapy, such as therapeutic tarot (Tavares1999).

Key Information

Alternative Therapy Circuits in Latin AmericaUntil the mid-2000s, the distribution of centers offering alternative therapies in Latin America followed a

pattern similar to those described by authors studying the phenomenon in the United States and Europe:

these therapeutic spaces are there concentrated in large urban centers and, above all, in middle-class

districts with high levels of schooling. From the 1990s, researchers like Jos Guilherme Magnani (1999)

in So Paulo, Maria Jlia Carozzi (2004) and Maria Mercedes Saizar (2008) in Buenos Aires, and Rene

de la Torre Castellanos (2012) and Cristina Gutierrez Zuiga (2005) in Guadalajara worked to map these

circuits of alternative therapies, showing despite the local singularities the close similarities between

the phenomenon in Latin America and its manifestation in other parts of the world. This localization is

combined with a continent-wide dynamic interconnecting these spaces, shaped by the circulation of

books, therapists, and products. As Maria Jlia Carozzi observes, writing specically about the relation

between Argentina and Brazil,

In addition to the circulation of individuals and the practice of mutual referral (Amaral 1999; Carozzi2000), in both

Argentina and Brazil, centres are also linked by a variety of New Age and alternative magazines as well as by the

organisation of New Age festivals and fairs. Brazilian literature on the topic strongly suggests that festivals and fairs play

a more important connecting role for the circuit in Brazil than they do in Argentina. In Buenos Aires, according to local

organisers, it was only in the beginning of the movement, during the 1980s, that large numbers of people attended

festivals. In the rst years of the following decade, mutual recommendation, gossip, magazines and books were the main

fuel of contacts and circulation from one discipline to another. (Carozzi 2007, p. 344)

This circulation of materials, people, and ideas enabled the rapid popularization of alternative therapies

in Latin America from the 1980s onward. As well as expanding the market in New Age consumer goods,this dynamic also allowed holistic therapists to be trained on short courses run by masters and speakers

who toured the integrative centers, alternative communities, and other New Age spaces (Russo 1993;

Tavares2012).

The landscape of therapies and therapist training quickly became transformed in the 2000s, however,

when a series of controls on these practices were introduced by ofcial bodies responsible for regulating

national health services. In 2006, for example, the Brazilian government introduced the National Policy

for Integrative and Complementary Practices, which altered the map of the spaces providing therapies by

making alternative therapies available in the countrys public hospitals as part of national policy (Toniol

2014).



Page 3 of 5


4/5


5/5

Russo J (1993) O corpo contra a palavra: o movimento das terapias corporais no campo psicolgico dos

anos 80. Editora UFRJ, Rio de Janeiro

Saizar M (2008) Todo el mundo sabe. Difusin y apropiacin de las tcnicas del yoga en Buenos Aires

(Argentina). Sociedade e cultura 11:112122

Tavares F (1999) Tornando-se tarlogo: percepo

racional

versus percepo

intuitiva

entre osiniciantes no tarot no Rio de Janeiro. J Numem 2:97123

Tavares F (2012) Alquimistas da Cura: a rede teraputica alternativa em contextos urbanos. UFBA,

Salvador

Tighe M, Butles J (2007) Holistic health and new age in Britain and the Republic of Ireland. In: Kemp D,

Lewis J (eds) Handbook of new age. Brill, Boston, pp 415434

Toniol R (2014) Integralidade, holismo e responsabilidade: etnograa da promoo de terapias

alternativas/complementares no SUS. In: Ferreira J, Fleischer S (eds) Etnograas em servios de

sade. Editora Garamond, Rio de Janeiro, pp 153178

Zhang X (2000) General guidelines for methodologies on research and evaluation of traditional medicine.

World Health Organization, Geneva



Page 5 of 5

alternative therapies and new age

Documents